Everything you want is on the other side of fear.

Holy smokes, it’s been awhile, guys! You may or may not have noticed. If you didn’t, it’s okay – I forgive you. I am much more active on my Instagram and Facebook lately for anyone who wants some little spurts of “Just Ask the Nursction, so feel free to keep up with me there!

ANYWAY!

A whole lot of stuff has been going on and keeping me from this blogging thing I so enjoy, so let me catch y’all up. A three weeks ago I finished my Women’s Health didactic course which means I started my Women’s Health Clinical rotation two weeks after a nice week off from school. I’ve been working overtime at work almost every week trying to get ready for the upcoming turbulence of what is clinical and working full time, aka basically two full time jobs – so fun! Then there was Halloween. See Chef Oliver below.

I have also spent every moment I wasn’t doing school work or working studying for the Board Certified Emergency Nurse (BCEN) exam. Some of you might know that I took it in July of 2017 and failed it by a whopping one question. ONE. SINGLE. QUESTION. Having never really failed anything like that in my life, I was pretty crushed. It brought me down a peg for sure and my work confidence really took a hit. I had been freaking out for this exam this go around, needless to say. I was so scared of retaking and failing the CEN exam again that it took me 15 months to work up to taking another stab at it. So I studied and worked my ass off to get ready (we’ll save the study material stuff for another day).

Everything you want is on the other side of fear

The day of my exam, I woke up and flipped my daily inspirational quote calendar (yeah, I’m that girl!) to October 31st. The message was the title of this post: “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” It really struck me! How many times have we kept ourselves back from doing something out of sheer fear of failure, embarrassment, whatever? I reflected on the way to the exam about all the times I’ve been fearful – there have been many. I’ve been fearful of failure in nursing, school courses, relationships, motherhood, friendships, being hurt, and just general life obstacles. I’m a planner and because of that, I fear ahead of time even! My mom has always had to quote my grandmother to keep me grounded and remind me, “cross that bridge when you get to it.” The moment before I walked in I let it sink in that if I wanted something, I was going to have to get through the fear and push on.

“How do you feel?”, the examiner asked when I exited the test room. I didn’t tell her how I really felt, which was that I wanted to throw up. I mean I had failed the test once and let’s be real here, this crap costs a LOT of money. I took my folded paper and walked outside before I opened it. Then I read it:

You have passed the CEN Exam.

Yeah, I flipped out.

So there ya have it, folks. I’m one heck of a scaredy cat. But I’ve decided that I’m not going to be afraid anymore. I’m going to keep on keepin’ on until my wheels stop turning, and I’m going to do it without fear.